IG Witzelsucht: Sometimes Puns are the Sign of a Damaged Brain
IG Witzelsucht are Dominic Robertson and Lukas Simonis, the once-and-future Ergo Phizmiz and the director of Rotterdam music lab WORM, respectively. With Sometimes Puns are the Sign of a Damaged Brain, the duo fuse Robertson's usual warped take on '60s pop b-sides with a harder, punkier edge, like Herman's Hermits tried to emulate the Sex Pistols in the late '70s. Despite the slight veneer of viciousness, though, this is still very much a pop record. Perhaps more than anything else either of these men have done before, Sometimes Puns... gives itself entirely over to the melody; every song on the record has an enormous hook that is ridden just long enough to lodge itself into your brain. In this way, this becomes the premier pop expression these two have put out so far, just astoundingly crunchy candy that deserves to be heard far and wide.
Trembling Bells: Dungeness
Dungeness is an album that tricks you. The first single put out for the album, the sublime 'Christ's Entry into Govan', is reasonably straight Fairport Convention style '70s folk rock, a lovely and forceful tale of misplaced religion. But then you get the album itself and you're greeted with the funk suite of 'Knockin' on the Coffin' and you realize this is something much more surprising than you at first thought. Dungeness still wears it's British folk influence on its sleeve, but it's turned and mutated, dosed with almost postpunk sheets of guitar and long, suitelike tracks that morph throughout their durations. All of this makes Dungeness much more interesting than a well-made but staid genre exercise, and all of it is anchored by singer Lavinia Blackwall's frankly stupendous voice, which can reach for the sky just as well as drip with menace depending on the situation. This is an album I had to put right back on as soon as I finished it, and with each spin you realize it's less Fairport and more Sandy Denny fronting Led Zeppelin.
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